Andrew Lincoln will ride again. The rumors of Rick Grimes death were greatly exaggerated. While the character is done with The Walking Dead television series, he will return in a series of movies for AMC. Via Variety:

The AMC series veteran has signed on to play the iconic character Rick Grimes in multiple feature-length projects in development at the network. A series of AMC Studios Original Films, starring Andrew Lincoln and written by “Walking Dead” chief content officer Scott Gimple are planned to continue the story of Rick Grimes, with the first expected to begin production as early as 2019.

It turns out there was a reason that the end of Andrew Lincoln’s run on The Walking Dead was billed as “Rick Grimes’ last episodes” and not “this is way that Rick Grimes finally died, so say goodbye because this character is never coming back.” When Rick didn’t actually die, Dustin Rowles was among those who sniffed this out, wondering if there was maybe a spin-off series in the works.

It will be interesting to see what kind of success a The Walking Dead movie could have 2 or 3 years from now. Ratings have dropped, and who knows how losing the main character will affect the show’s following. With “multiple feature-length projects” coming, you also have to wonder how long until Grimes is folded right back into the universe.